In the mid-1990s, the small seaside community of Maki was a rare exception in Japan, rejecting a nuclear-power plant offered to keep the town afloat, while similar villages embraced reactors as an economic development tool. As Japan now halts nuclear development, Maki's fate underscores the struggle that dozens of other rural towns could suddenly face without those jobs or subsidies.
A few years after turning down the reactors, the village of Maki in northwestern Japan disappeared in a merger of several municipalities, all with shrinking populations and tax bases, creating a bitterness that lasts to this day-even post-Fukushima-about the choice not taken.
Local officials say many residents have put the once-divisive nuclear-plant debate behind them and have accepted a more modest destiny as a slowly, steadily declining agricultural economy. "GDP in this whole region has been drifting lower for years," said Toshiyuki Saitou, the local ward chief who works in the former town hall. (Wall Street Journal)
In the mid-1990s, the small seaside community of Maki was a rare exception in Japan, rejecting a nuclear-power plant offered to keep the town afloat, while similar villages embraced reactors as an economic development tool. As Japan now halts nuclear development, Maki's fate underscores the struggle that dozens of other rural towns could suddenly face without those jobs or subsidies.
A few years after turning down the reactors, the village of Maki in northwestern Japan disappeared in a merger of several municipalities, all with shrinking populations and tax bases, creating a bitterness that lasts to this day-even post-Fukushima-about the choice not taken.
Local officials say many residents have put the once-divisive nuclear-plant debate behind them and have accepted a more modest destiny as a slowly, steadily declining agricultural economy. "GDP in this whole region has been drifting lower for years," said Toshiyuki Saitou, the local ward chief who works in the former town hall. (Wall Street Journal)